Sunil Janah Dies at 94

Sunil Janah, an Indian photographer who won international fame with his images of the famine that struck Bengal in 1943 and 1944, died June 21 at home in Berkeley, California, was 94.

His death was confirmed by his son, Arjun.

Mr. Janah documented ethnic and religious diversity of India, as well as important events in modern history of the country, both before and immediately after its independence in 1947.

At a time when many photographers to technical problems, started with a Kodak Brownie box, or use a Nikon until 1980.

His photographs of the famine, published in the People's War, the newspaper of the Communist Party of India, revealed the horrors that had just been informed by the press, which was banned by British authorities.

As the critic Vicki Goldberg wrote in The New York Times in 1998, reviewing an exhibition of work by Mr. Janah the 678 Gallery in Manhattan, the images showed "withered lines of people waiting for food groups of skeletons, the dogs gnawing human bones hungry. " Postcards of these photos were sent worldwide to raise funds.

"Unlike other photographers," said Ram Rahman, the curator of this exhibition, "was an active political worker Janah policy work for the picture of events."

The famine, which was attributed to hoarding and losses in the food distribution system, instead of bad harvests, said that 3.5 million lives and caused international outrage directed at wartime British colonial authorities, who are accused of walking off the much more massive famine.

Mr. Janah later became known for his explicit pictures of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the writer and philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti and other personalities of India.

One of them showed Gandhi sitting in a pensive attitude before a large crowd in Bombay, now known as Mumbai.

Sunil Janah was born April 17, 1918, in Dibrugarh, Assam. His father, Sarat Chandra was a prominent lawyer in the High Court of Calcutta.

Mr. Janah grew up in Calcutta, now known as Calcutta, and became interested in photography as a child, had no formal training but learned to work with photographers who set their darkrooms.

He became involved in leftist politics while studying at St. Xavier College and the University of Calcutta to the presidency. PC Joshi, general secretary of the Communist Party of India, persuaded him to abandon his studies and traveled with him to document the artist Chittoprasad Bhattacharya Bengal famine.

The images brought him fame in India, which was requested by Margaret Bourke-White, the celebrated photographer for Life magazine.

Became friends and worked as a team, after photographing the widespread famine in Rayalaseema and Mysore in southern India, in 1945.

They also document the chaos before and after the assassination of Gandhi in 1948, especially the images of people fill the streets of Calcutta after his death.